Thursday, July 31, 2014

Stop the Wars, Stop the Warming!

Stop the Wars, Stop the Warming!

We are at a crossroads, faced with a climate crisis that threatens to end our world as we know it.

The signs of climate change are all around us. They
include—increasingly severe weather everywhere (floods, heat waves,
droughts, cyclones and wildfires), as well as melting polar ice and
glaciers, rising acidic oceans, and thawing of Siberian permafrost,
which threatens release of huge, devastating, methane gas emissions.

If we pursue business as usual we face a world of food shortages
caused by drought, increasing disease and deaths, and displacement from
vast areas of flooded and uninhabitable terrain. We must do all in our
power to stop greenhouse gas emissions, counteract the effects, and
prevent the increase of global warming.

But
the developing climate emergency does not exist in isolation. And we
must understand and confront the social and economic context that
produced and accompanies it: war and unlimited military expenditures,
corporate globalization, vast social inequality and racism.

The US military is the single greatest institutional producer of greenhouse gases in the world.

Wars by their very nature destroy the environment and burn and
release massive amounts of greenhouse gases. Recent military
mobilizations are pouring huge amounts of new carbon emissions into the
atmosphere.

The vast expenditures now consumed by military machines are the very
resources needed for a crash program to rapidly create a renewable
energy infrastructure and put millions of people to work in green jobs.

Wars and military buildup are in large part dedicated to controlling
the fossil fuel energy sources on which our present model of global
economic development and endless growth depend. Resort to armed conflict
is increasing as fossil fuels become more expensive and difficult to
extract, transport and produce.

Nuclear weapons, like climate change, threaten to destroy the world.
There are nine nuclear-armed nations and 17,000 nuclear weapons in the
world. With ten wars and 34 limited conflicts now occurring, the chance
of any one of them escalating to nuclear war and its unthinkable human
and environmental impact is an ever-present specter. The nuclear powers
are bound, under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to disarm
all nuclear weapons everywhere, but after 44 years, they have not begun
comprehensive negotiations. In the words of President Kennedy, we must
“end these weapons of mass destruction, before they end us.”

The UN Millennium Development Goals in conjunction with other forces
have helped lift the poorest billion of humanity out of extreme
poverty. The damage now coming as a result of climate change threatens
to erase that progress.

The people most affected by climate change are those with the fewest
resources to deal with it. With increasing environmental destruction,
droughts, floods, and famine, there will be massive displacement of
impoverished and desperate people leading to forced migration and
regional hostilities. Within the U.S., the people most affected include
those in prison or nursing homes and others who lack resources to leave
their homes or institutions in storms like Katrina and Sandy.

Two examples of long-term-drought-induced Climate Wars are the
tragedies in Somalia and Syria. In the latter case, a five-year drought
was one of the contributors to an ongoing civil war. Somalia has been
at war for twenty years, and that conflict has also embroiled
neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia.

Rather than taking emergency measures to address climate change and
the needs of those impacted now, our military is preparing to control
these displacements to protect “US interests”.

We who have opposed the toxic, polluting, life- and earth-destroying
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the existential threat of nuclear
weapons are in total support of the People’s Climate March
and its vision of a world without fossil fuels and the fires of war. We
will march, we will demand divestment and fight denial, we will battle
the pollution of Big Money, and we will join in demanding that the Obama
administration step forward to achieve a 2015 global treaty to phase
out greenhouse gas emissions.

We call on all who want to preserve our planet to form a Stop the Wars, Stop the Warming Contingent on September 21. We organize under the following principles:

We can’t effectively address climate change without ending war and militarism;

We can’t end war without ending the fossil fuel energy system;

We can’t address social injustice unless we stop using war to
safeguard an economic infrastructure (based on fossil fuels) that
produces and requires vast social inequality.

We can’t end war unless we address the systemic inequality and corporate domination that requires it.

We must insist that the transition to a sustainable economy and
green jobs not be accomplished at the expense of those now employed in
the fossil fuel and military sectors and the communities in which they
work and live. Energy and armament corporations should bear the lion’s
share of the social cost to make that transition a just one.

We call on our government

To undertake an emergency program to make all our cities energy
efficient and to create a new energy grid based on renewable energy
sources.

To end federal subsidies for the fossil fuel industries—coal, gas, oil and industrial biomass

To
end the 2005 “Cheney exemption” to the Clean Water Act for gas
hydraulic fracking, which threatens clean water supplies to our people
in some 23 states. Strictly enforce the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts
of 1970, in all energy production.

To stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure, including the
Keystone pipeline project, and to rapidly end fracking projects and the
awarding of any new offshore drilling contracts.

To build a carbon-free, nuclear-free energy future and end subsidies
for nuclear power. Nuclear power is not a green alternative energy,
results in large amounts of radioactive nuclear waste, and contributes
to the global proliferation of nuclear weapons.

To implement a financial transaction tax to fund the new solar,
wind, hydro, and efficiency programs we need globally and to help clean
up the toxic mess of fossil and nuclear destruction.

To join with all nuclear powers to abide by their treaty commitments
and to move quickly toward mutual abolition of all nuclear weapons as
required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

To re-direct military spending to the creation of millions of green
jobs and to research and develop a rapid but just transition from fossil
fuels to non-polluting energy sources.

To stop the military protection of fossil fuel interests in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.

To bring all our troops home now from Afghanistan and Iraq, reject
military attacks in Iraq, Syria and Iran, and use the billions saved to
invest in energy efficient mass transit, schools, affordable housing and
sustainable union-standard jobs.

To redefine the mission of U.S. military forces as defense of the
United States instead of achieving “Full Spectrum Dominance” in the
service of global corporations, the fossil fuel industry, and the
military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned against,
thereby also allowing closure of most of our 1,000 or more foreign
military bases.

To stop blocking the proposals for effective international action on
climate change being put forward by the Group of 77 and other
developing countries, starting at the UN on September 23, 2014. All
countries must do something, but the countries which are most
responsible for carbon emissions have the larger responsibility to
commit resources, resulting in an 85% cut in greenhouse gases by 2050.
The wealthier developed countries should provide $100 billion to an
international fund for green industrial development in less developed
countries.

We can’t afford the greenhouse gas emissions arising from the way we
live and from war and preparation for war. And we can’t afford the
climate of mistrust and non-cooperation that military threats and
intervention foster.

To successfully avert worst-case climate disaster we will need
international agreements and cooperation on a scale not seen in the
past; we need new approaches in order to demilitarize US foreign policy
and humanize domestic policy.

We believe that most Americans will welcome these positive
changes. Working together, peace, climate and social justice activists
can help make this happen.

We see September 21st as the coming together of the peace, climate
and social justice movements and the beginning of a groundswell of
public involvement in the creation of a more peaceful, sustainable and
just world.

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
This also applies to anyone writing to complain about a friend of mine. That's not why the public account exists.